


Tilting Toward the Sun

by quiettewandering



Series: The many universes in which i love you [5]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Established Castiel/Dean Winchester, Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, M/M, Schmoopy Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 17:51:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7232650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiettewandering/pseuds/quiettewandering
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas takes care of a dying sunflower. Dean learns something about Cas, and himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tilting Toward the Sun

“Dean.”

He turns around to see Cas, holding a limp yellow plant in his arms, his eyes gazing down to regard the wilted stems and scraggly stalk. “What you got there, Cas?”

“A sunflower,” he says, petting its brown leaves. The face of the sunflower stares up at him, yellow leaves shaking with Cas’s movement. “I found it in the corner. It seems ill.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “Is there the part where you ask me if we can keep it?”

Cas looks up at him with impossibly huge, pleading eyes and, well, Dean knows he can’t resist him.

The next few days are dedicated to intensive sunflower-therapy. Cas gets it into his head that with a little bit of human company and a soothing voice, it’ll perk up, so he carries it around the bunker everywhere he goes: to eat, brush his teeth, watch TV, he even paces up and down the hallways with it, clutching the pot close to his chest. Sam trails behind them, laptop in hand, reciting from plant-care web pages ways on how to keep sunflowers healthy (one of them being they should be outside most of the day, but Cas is worried about the frost). Dean avoids them whenever possible, grumbling about the weird, tangy smell that the sunflower was emitting into the bunker.

Cas gives every spare moment to the plant. He moves it into different parts of the sun for the optimum exposure when sitting outside with it. He gives it a routine watering of three times a day, propping it onto the table while eating his own meals. Dean continues to find him in the war room, sitting with it at the table, head tilted toward his flower, stroking the plant’s dehydrated leaves and conversing with it in low murmurs.

But despite the constant care, Dean notices that the plant continues to shrivel, curl in on itself, slowly descend further into the dirt. Despite its slow decay, it stubbornly keeps its face turned upward, as if to stay staring up at Cas.

On a Monday morning, eight days after rescuing the plant, Dean finds Cas sitting on the edge of their bed, head bowed and shoulders shaking. He sees a very brown and very dead sunflower drooping pathetically at Cas’s feet, face turned to the floor.

Dean sighs. The mattress dips as he sits next to his crying ex-angel. “Oh, hey, it’s okay, Cas,” he tries, reaching out a hand to console him.

“It’s not, Dean,” Cas’s voice cracks out. “I looked up every fact I could. I gave it sun, and water, and care, and still it died.”

Dean looks down at his hands, listening to Cas’s wet sniffs fill the silence. “Sometimes that happens, Cas. Sometimes, there’s only so much we can do.” He takes Cas’s hand, rubbing his thumb across his fingers. “You loved that thing, and I think it loved you back.”

Swiping an arm across his teary face, Cas mutters, “Plants don’t have souls, Dean.”

He presses a soft kiss onto Cas’s temple. “You know, I was dying once, and you took care of me, made me feel like I was living again,” he admits softly. “So don’t think that you can’t take care of things. Just try again, angel.”

The next afternoon, Dean comes home from a grocery run and nearly trips over a potted chrysanthemum as he steps off the stairs. He looks up to see the ground flooded with orphaned pots of flowers, vegetable plants, and herbs. Dean sees a man–his man–standing amongst all of them, holding a watering can.

Cas catches his gaze, his conversation with a basil plant stopping mid-sentence. His face slowly stretches into a bright smile.

It’s a smile that Dean orbits, one that Dean turns to every day; like a sunflower tilting toward the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> Send me a prompt or your friendship on [my tumblr](https://quiettewandering.tumblr.com).


End file.
